A Couple of Easy Ideas for Christmas

Here are a couple of easy ideas for Christmas! (and delicious!!)

First up, a simple Pumpkin, Spinach & Feta Salad!

To make this, you simply cut up some pumpkin, sprinkle with the herbs/spices of your choice - I used a pre-mixed "Moroccan Spice Mix", toss onto a baking tray with half a sliced red onion and 2-4 cloves of garlic.  Spray with a little olive oil spray, and bake in a 180c oven for about 40 minutes. You can allow to cool (as I did) or use warm.

Mix together 1tablespoon of olive oil and 2 teaspoons of lemon juice, and add 1-2 of the previously roasted cloves of garlic (chop them up or mash them!).  Take your spinach leaves (or any other salad leaves that take your fancy - I actually used a bag labelled "Aussie Salad" which also had some slithers of grated beetroot in it), and toss with the dressing. Then its just a matter of adding the roasted pumpkin & onion, some chopped feta cheese and some chopped walnuts! 

The second Easy Christmas creation is a fruit salad Christmas tree!

To do this, you take a carrot and a cored apple, and put the carrot into the centre of the apple.  You then toothpick your chosen fruit to this structure until it resembles a Christmas Tree! I used Watermelon, Kiwi,  Strawberries, Grapes and Cherries.  Next time, I will be trying to add some slices of stone fruit as well (to cover more of the gaps!!)

Barbeque Lunch - Tygum Lagoon

Its been a little while between posts! Not that there has been a lack of cooking, or eating, just a lack of posting! Shall try to rectify that situation


We decided that we would like to have a barbeque lunch, and since we deposited our bbq on the footpath during a council clean-up, we had to find a bbq in a park!  Janet hit the computer and Googled up Tygum Lagoon, at Waterford.  Armed with our google map, an esky of food and a happy dog, we set off!

We managed to not get lost, despite there seeming to be a lack of street signs.  We even managed to find a bbq that was not being used!


its quite a nice park, with a walking track all the way around the lagoon (there is also exercise equipment all the way around if you are so inclined)


I cooked up our lunch, while Janet kept Shadow entertained.  I had Tofu & red capsicum kebabs (marinated in soy and lemon) and some salad.  Janet had sausages on a bread roll.  I managed to forget to bring the sauce! oops!)



This rather magnificent model sail boat was being sailed on the lagoon!


Now we know this park exists, I am sure we will be back another day!

Christmas Day 2011!

Our day began at home with some gift opening....

Shadow managed to destroy her toy in about 2 minutes....

Monty was slightly interested in the tree



And Jaspa had a ball playing in the paper!

And then we headed off to Pam & Sid's for breakfast....



We began with some delicious fruit salad!


Sid cooked up some ham, tomatoes, hash browns, mushrooms and toast on the bbq

and Pam made some scrambled eggs. This was my plate!

oh, and there were also croissants! A great way to start the day!!

then we headed off to my parents place for lunch....


 


sparkly bon-bons made by my cousin! These bon-bons gave us all a sparkle for the rest of the day!



Prawns for entree


this sesame seaweed was amazing!


instead of prawns, I had this quinoa salad with walnuts and cranberries

and then we filled the table with an amazing array of food!

A crunchy noodle salad made by Jill -


 I made this Cous Cous and sprouted Chick Pea salad.  I saw how to sprout the chick peas on Scandie Foodie's blog.  TO the cous cous and chick peas, I simply added some roasted pumpkin, sweet corn (from our garden) and tossed through a dressing made from lemon juice, garlic, chilli, olive oil and a splash of soy sauce.

I made this potato salad - for the dressing I mixed equal parts of Birch & Waite Aioli Garlic Mayo and EasyYo Greek yoghurt. Then I just mixed in some chives and some cooked bacon (I also set aside some without bacon for me!)


there was also roasted chicken

ham

this magnificent, and massive green salad

and a tomato salad!


Were we full yet? possibly, but there is always room for pudding!

fruit mince pies!


Berries! The berries are my highlight of the Christmas lunch for me! Its not Christmas until I have had a lovely bowl of juicy berries!

There was also a Christmas pudding, but it was chopped up and dispersed to plates before I had a chance to take a photo! believe me, it was yummy!!


MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Fathers Day Lunch!

For Fathers Day, we took lunch to Mum & Dad's place, so the food had to be transportable, and, since we were off to a morning tea prior to lunch, it had to be pre-cooked.

I decided to give Pulled Pork a try.

I adapted this recipe from Not Quite Nigella

Since I do not have a pressure cooker, I used the oven. And majorly increased the cooking time!!
Pulled Pork
2kg Pork Shoulder (remove the skin and fat layer
1 onion
bunch of parsley
4 cloves garlic
1 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons Worcestershire Sauce
2 tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
1/4 teaspoon mustard powder
1/4 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon salt
good grinding of pepper
1 cup water

Fry onion, garlic and parsley stalks, and brown pork in the same pan (if you have a casserole dish that can go on the stovetop, use this, if not, you will need to improvise!).  Mix remaining ingredients and pour over/around pork.  Allow to come to a gentle bubble, then remove from stovetop and place in a 140c oven (put a lid on it).  Cook in the 140c oven for 6-7 hours.  Until pork is falling apart.  Then remove the meat from the sauce and pull it apart with a fork.  I found I had too much liquid, so only put some of it through the pulled pork.  This could be because I used 1 cup of water instead of the half in the original recipe.  Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve.  (or put in fridge, then transport to lunch the next day, reheat gently in microwave, sprinkle with parsley and serve!) Serve with fresh bread rolls and make pulled pork rolls!




We also had a delicious garden salad from Gina & Scott



and this potato salad which I made (simply potatoes and snow peas in a dressing made with half a bottle of potato salad dressing and the same quantity of greek yoghurt.)

For Dessert, I made @everydaycook's famous brownies (topped with toasted hazelnuts)and some cinnamon donut icecream to go with them....

the icecream recipe goes like this......

Ingredients
2 cups milk
3 cinnamon donuts
extra milk
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups cream

put milk and donuts into a saucepan and warm over a medium heat.  When hot, but not boiling, remove from heat and put lid on saucepan.  Allow to cool.  Strain milk through fine sieve so that no lumps are present.  Measure how much milk you are left with, and use extra milk to make amount back up to 2 cups.

Place the donut flavoured milk into a saucepan with the 3 eggs. Beat eggs and milk together well, stir in the sugar.  Stir constantly over a low to medium heat until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of spoon.    Cool.  Stir in the cream. Refrigerate until cold (overnight if you like).  I use an icecream machine to churn the chilled mix until frozen

Garden Salad - from the actual garden!!

I made a delicious salad - the majority of the ingredients were from our vegie garden!! This was very exciting for me!!!!

Basically, I tossed together lettuce, baby spinach and a mixture of herbs with some roasted beetroot (I put the beetroot into a parcel of aluminium foil with some herbs and a splash of water, and roasted until softened, then splashed the chopped cooked beetroot with a little raspberry vinegar), and some fetta cheese.  I mixed up a quick dressing using olive oil, raspberry vinegar, and some honey mustard, which I drizzled over the leaves.

It was great to be able to make use of some home-grown vegies!!!! Although it makes for quite n expensive salad, if you take into account the cost of setting up the garden in the first place - handyman, dirt delivery etc, but of course, the garden will be around for a long time!!! And hopefully will provide us with more than one salad :-)




Actually, a week later, I made another salad from the garden - this time a Green Garden Salad - I made up a pesto using macadamias, garlic, parmesan and basil & parsley, which I  added a tablespoon of to the usual salad dressing ingredients of olive oil and vinegar. I tossed this dressing over lettuce leaves and baby spinach from the garden to create a very tasty and simple salad.  Seem to have forgotten to make it smile for the camera before it was eaten however!!

out for lunch - Sizzler Redcliffe

for Janet's birthday, I caved in and said we could go to one of her favourite dining destinations - Sizzler.  I chose Sizzler at Redcliffe so we could go for a nice walk along the water as well as eat!

We both had the salad bar for lunch - and below are our first plates.....its probably not too difficult to work out which is which...



Janet's plate (hmmm a little bit of green seems to have snuck on there...)




and here is my plate.  I was a little dissapointed they didnt have a tomato based vegetarian sauce for the pasta - I ended up putting some roasted capsicum soup on it! Sizzler salads always annoy me, because so many of them have meat in them! But it ended up being a fairly tasty lunch - I managed to make my own salads anyway!




and the "famous" Sizzler cheese toast. I let Janet have half of mine, because I am very nice :-) and because I wasn't really all that fussed on it! oops!




then it was off for a wander along the water! (we drove to get to the water)

Dinner at Home - Lemon Chilli Chicken with pan fried potatoes

An easy weeknight dinner - Before work, I put a chicken breast into a bowl with the juice of a lemon, a tablespoon of olive oil, a sprinkle of paprika, and a chopped red chilli, and left this to marinate in the fridge for the day.

 Spend the day at work, then come home and start to prepare the potatoes!

I simply sliced a potato into 3 lengthways, leaving the skin on. Into a cold frying pan I put some olive oil, a red chilli, a peeled clove of garlic and some thyme and rosemary from the garden. I gently heated this up and then added the poato slices, and cooked slowly until the potato slices were cooked through. Before serving, I turned up the heat a little to increase the crispness of the potatoes.





The chicken, I simply panfried until it was golden brown and cooked through





I was quite impressed with the colour of the chicken!




For myself, I threw together a quick, but delicious salad - I panfried some Soyco Thai Tofu, and served it on a salad of baby spinach, red capsicum, cherry tomatoes (from the garden), red onion, and a coupe of raw purple beans.  I squeezed over some lemon juice just before serving. YUM!!